Jester David
Hero
I'm a bit more particular, having done a couple homebrew settings and really looking into the art of worldbuilding in order to do a blog series (that became a book).
It's pretty easy to look at official WotC settings and see awkwardness. Impossible rivers in Greyhawk. The tiny, tiny size of Ansalon in Dragonlance. Peaceful agrarian nations next to expansionist conquerors in the Forgotten Realms. A river that flows from a sea to a sea in Ravenloft.
And that's before considering unnatural terrain like verdant forests where there should be arid plains and desert where there should be rainforest and the like.
Because I've done so much of that, I'm very aware of those details so they jump out at me, like a dead pixel on a monitor. And when doing communal worldbuilding, it's so much easier to just make those "mistakes".
My world evolved because I was playing Organized Play and had a lot of free time at work. And I've just kept adding to it, typically when on a break from DMing.
Because I keep using the same setting again and again, telling stories in different regions, it's less work now.
They're a little silly but no more than any of the other bajillion "beast people" in D&D.
We already have hyena people, lizard people, toad people (who are different from the frog people), two types of fish people, hippo people, crow people (who are different from the generic bird people), several types of dinosaur people, lobster people, dragon people, horse people, bull people, elephant people, two types of spider people, tiger people, cat people, and snake people.
And that's just in 5e. And *most* of those are playable races!
Given the low population numbers of medieval worlds, most of these species should really only have a few thousand members, and be functionally endangered species.
In terms of my setting, the world is also tidally locked. So there's no oceans. And the playable region is relatively small. Working in the tortles was going to be tricky. But the player offered some suggestions for a location and implied he was one of only a few, so I wasn't forcing in a large population.
Which helps, and shows me that the player is also willing to put in some effort rather than just mandating a character and expecting me to do all the work.
Again, making a character that is unusual in order to be unique and special without having to put in the work of actually thinking of something unique. Being the "last XXX" is common way of doing this, as is being the "good drow".
I'm also not prone to adding content for min/maxing reasons. I don't much care if the "X" from splatbook "Y" is the most optimal choice for a character.
For my own homebrew, I tend not to say "x doesn't exist". I leave gaps so I can add tortles if I need to. And I try to accomodate my players when possible.
I'm harder when it comes to established D&D settings. Like Dragonlance. When I ran a Dragonlance campaign the point was to play in that world, through those adventures, with its tropes. To embrace the world and what made it unique and different. And part of that was the racial limitations: no halflings, no orcs, no drow, no dragonborn.
I didn't also need to shoe-horn in races just because a player couldn't wait eight months for the adventure to end to play a half-orc.
Right. Agreed.
But if the DM changes their view by default, how is that different from allowing everything all the time? The DM needs to be able to say "no". And players need to be able to accept that "no".
In practice, I'm a soft sell. I'll allow my players almost anything and make exceptions readily. But I also know my players and we have trust.
But as a general rule, I think it's better to assume that "no" and have the default be options and optional. Empower the DM.
Because if the baseline is "no" and the DM says "yes" they're a hero while if the baseline is "yes" and the DM says "no" they're a monster.
